It’s been my experience that large dogs are pretty good at finding a way to open certain types of doors.

My family growing up had a golden retriever who was kept out of certain parts of the house with a small metal child-gate set up in a doorway. We humans could work the bolt-action style spring-secured release mechanism to open it, or just step over it since it was relatively low, but the dogs couldn’t master it for years, until eventually the least bright of the bunch got lucky just biting at the top of the gate frame one day and somehow managed to trip the bolt and swing the gate open by pulling her head in certain directions.

Within two or three days of that fateful event she had mastered it and started teaching it to the other dogs, one of which in particular was pleased as punch to know how to get through because when he was young he used to be able to jump over the gate - then he got older and heavier.

Naturally we installed a new gate that wasn’t opened the same way, but once she had mastered the concept, she tried her luck on other doors too. She eventually became proficient at opening those round, spherical door handles with absolutely no purchase on them, all using her mouth.

When I was a kid we had two cats called Sandy & Silver. Both were able to jump up & grab a door handle to open it a little. Then they’d get their claws into the edge of the door to pull it further open. Sadly we didn’t have camcorders back then, so I’ve no evidence… (o: